Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @11:13AM
from the taxpayers-will-die-while-NASA-teases dept.

Randym writes "NASA scientists have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument. The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. 'We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting,' says John Grotzinger. He's the principal investigator for the rover mission. SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) is a suite of instruments onboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something Earth-shaking. 'This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good,' he says."

Should be evidence of life, something not so surprising. But could be even more shattering to find that we are actually martians that come here very long ago escaping from the climate change that we caused on Mars (even that we Marsformed Earth back then).

It's quite a long way away, and a minority of people would like the climate there.

Lets contrast then.Venus: probes dissolve in less than 20 minutesMercury: probe melts before landingJupiter: a whole lot more distant and any probe aimed at the planet itself will face storms larger than all the rocky planets combinedSaturn: ever more distant, slightly smaller storms than JupiterUranus: same trendNeptune: very far, very cold storms

And for the classicalists:Pluto: tiny rock, very far away, in an awkward 5 or so object mutual orbit arrangement

for the completionists:Ceres: smaller than Pluto, but much closer, completely surrounded by other hazardous rocksQuaoar: very far, pretty smallSedna: very far, pretty smallEris: very far, pretty smallHaumea: very far, very smallMakemake: very far, very small

No oxygen to burn it with. The biggest reason coal is so useful on Earth is because it reacts with the ever-abundant oxygen in the air to make warmth (which can be used for power with some more materials)